Brian Fonseca, eWeek, reports:

MySQL AB on Monday released Version 4.0.17 of its MySQL open-source database software. The update features a number of cleaned up code defects that were recently sniffed out by an independent inspection company.

[..] Despite the uncovered bugs, Reasoning concluded that Uppsala, Sweden-based MySQL AB’s code quality was in fact six times better than that of comparable commercial, proprietary code. [..]

Available in source code and binary form, the MySQL 4.0.17 maintenance release for the current MySQL production version corrects all valid bugs discovered during an October poll conducted within the development community via an independent study by Mountain View, Calif.-based Reasoning Inc.

ADVERTISEMENT

According to its study, Reasoning officials said the company found 21 software defects in 235,667 lines of MySQL source code. The report’s Defect Summary noted 15 defect instances of NULL Pointer Deference, three defect instances of an allocated memory leak, and three defect instances of an uninitialized variable prior to usage.

Despite the uncovered bugs, Reasoning concluded that Uppsala, Sweden-based MySQL AB’s code quality was in fact six times better than that of comparable commercial, proprietary code.

Reasoning performed its independent analysis using defect density as a prime quality indicator. Defined as the number of defects found per thousand lines of code, MySQL’s defect density registered as 0.09 defects per thousand lines of source code. Through its analysis, Reasoning concluded that the commercial average defect densitycovering 200 recent projects and totaling 35 million lines of commercial codecame to 0.57 defects per thousand lines of code.